


The Wild Star

by ScissorsParchment



Series: The Wild Star [1]
Category: Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Kung Fu, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-23
Updated: 2018-06-29
Packaged: 2019-05-27 06:25:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15018626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScissorsParchment/pseuds/ScissorsParchment
Summary: The red Seeker comes to greet the remaining half of Senators in the Martial Arts World Alliance and pave the way for the arising Decepticons.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Humanized Kung Fu fiction AU, background is ancient China. Translated from my [Chinese original](http://aprilapplez.lofter.com/post/1d292132_12a6e46d)

Proteus stares at the young man in the middle of the drill ground.

Still in his late teens, the slender man is in white long coat and red gauze vest, a waterfall of dark black hair halfway down his back. There is a snigger on his exceptionally delicate face with slanted almond eyes, arched willow-leaf eyebrows, and crimson Triones tattoo underneath the left eye.

Yet his arms are bound by a thick iron chain, his hands shackled behind his back.

Even the hottest opera actor in the town cannot be as hot as him, Proteus comments silently. He’d be interested if the one in front him really was an opera actor. But now he stares at the Adonis as if he saw a viper.

The Adonis is not a viper. He is the Red Spider.

\- Starscream, Red Spider as his epithet in the martial arts world, one of the toughest figures in the Decepticon faction.

The Cons rose to power in the Forge, the underground gladiator arena where bigwigs and outlaws betted on cruel battling games. Unlike ordinary martial arts contests, lost gladiators in the Forge could not exit alive or without being such disabled that they could not carry out kung fu any more. Gladiators willing to enter the games, therefore, were almost all humble ones and unlikely from righteous factions. However, there are numerous Decepticon sympathizers in the martial arts world, seeing that the Decepticons aimed to threw over the Martial Arts World Alliance.

The Alliance, de facto ruling body of the martial arts world, puts a high hand on its people. Oppression, exploitation and liquidation of dissidents are all the Alliance practices, not only on martial arts factions, but on ordinary citizens due to the authorities behind it.

Among the most powerful Senators in the Alliance, Proteus is more than happy with the status quo. In his mind, under the guise of discriminating good and evil there are merely the law of the jungle. To get a place in this world, one has to follow the rules. The Alliance is the rules.

Wanted and suppressed by the Alliance, the Decepticons nevertheless have been continuously expanding their forces. And this one, Starscream, very young as he is, has moved up swiftly among the Cons to their second-in-command, in just one year since he joined the faction.

He is called Red Spider due to his art of snipe and kill. Being the fastest swordman among the Decepticons, he features his killer-style agile and ruthless attacks, as well as incredible acrobatic movements making him like a red butterfly passing through the blooms in the battlefield.

Red butterfly, yes – he is used to be dressed in red as today. This is too much of a high profile for killers that should act covertly.

His arrogance is not limited to that. He is more than capable to infuriate his enemies with an acrimonious tongue and carry out fatal attacks when they are off guard in anger. His tongue is also a silken one, enabling him to recruit several deadliest members for the Decepticons within merely one year.

But he’s no better than an ignorant youth, Proteus scoffs secretly. Who can be a good killer with so flaunting manners and without hiding any bit of his capacities? Martial arts that are too good-looking are usually gimcrackeries, and his butterfly-like acrobatic movements should be of no exception.

Proteus is unwilling to admit, however, that his scorn on Starscream is just to cover up his dread of him and the Decepticons.

Seated to the left of the chair for the Alliance Leader, he is aware of that the surrounding dozen of chairs for Senators in the Alliance are almost half empty. Just days ago, the Decepticons assaulted several Senators when they were hanging out, surrounded by showgirls, and slaughtered all of them. The Alliance suffered from this great loss, and even it is of great scale and never lacks capable successors of the Senators, there is time to appoint new Senators, as the Alliance is so engaged in hunting down the Decepticons now. 

Megatron, the Decepticon Leader, is of a too stalwart figure to avoid others’ attention and lead an ambush in a busy street. Thus, it is Starscream who led the assault and killed most of those Senators, judged by the looks of mortal sword cuts on their corpses.

 So what? Thinks Proteus as he suppresses his upsets. We have captured nearly all the Cons including their chieftain, just awaiting their execution in front of all factions in the martial arts world which also serves as a warning to whoever trying to overthrow the Alliance.

Moreover, the bastard in front of him, arrogant as he is, turns out to be spineless.

Last night, after the Cons were marched in the jail, Starscream had a quarrel with his leader, saying it was exactly Megatron’s incapability that led the Decepticons to the current situation. Then the red killer told the jailors that he wanted to have a word with the Alliance Leader, for the sake of his fortune.

Seeing that Starscream defected and was to disclose his faction’s secrets in exchange for his own good, his fellow Decepticons started to curse him. Megatron would have hit the ceiling, if the acupoints on his limbs had not been blocked, making him immobile [1].

“Starscream, if I do not die in the Alliance this time, I will be sure to dismember you, alive.” He could just grind out.

As the Alliance Leader Sentinel Prime is off the Alliance headquarter for another important affair, the interrogation over Starscream is instead hosted by Proteus. The trail takes place in the drill ground, so that delegates of numerous factions under the Alliance’s control can stand around the ground to witness it. Now the entire ground is surrounded by the delegates.

Proteus, however, does not really believe that Starscream is going to confess in order to reduce his culpability. Rather, he suspects that this is a trap. In particular, Starscream is said to practice a peculiar inner power [2] that can impede the movements of his enemies, which is very difficult to guard against. Thus, although Starscream has been in an upper-body stasis through acupoint block, Proteus still ordered the red killer to have his arms chained on his back and shackled by a sophisticated iron lock before he was brought to the drill ground.

Proteus shoots a glance at the right side of the Senators’ chairs. He feels loathed at the sight of a man in blue standing there among the Alliance’ members.

That man, Soundwave, is a subordinate of Senator Ratbat, thought highly of by his master due to his exceptional telepath ability. His wears a wedged mask and never reveals his face in public. He is young and comely, though, inferring from his jaw curves that are sometimes barely seen beneath his mask.

Soundwave was amidst the Decepticons when the Alliances rounded up them in the Forge, and thus captured and sent to the Alliance headquarter as well. Ratbat, however, insisted on releasing Soundwave, claiming that the telepath is the undercover spy he sent to the Decepticons.

But Proteus is suspicious of Soundwave, even of Ratbat. If Ratbat sent Soundwave to the Forge merely to spy the Cons’ movements of the Alliance, why he has never implied this to other Senators, even without the spy’s name? He should have other ulterior motives instead.

Don’t play with fire, Ratbat. Proteus brings his attention back to the red killer in the front and clears his throat:

“Criminal Starscream, what do you want to say? According to the numerous crimes your committed - assaulting, smuggling, sedition against the Alliance and murdering of Senators - you cannot exonerate yourself whatever you confess.”

Starscream starts to speak in a mocking tone , his voice piercing yet raucous:

 “I come here just to greet the other half of the Senators.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [1] Acupoint (穴道): “specific points on the body where a needle is inserted in acupuncture or pressure is applied in acupressure (Collins English Dictionary)”. E.g. temple. Acupoint block (点穴): the action of kung-fu masters to temporally paralyze others’ body parts (e.g. legs) by attacking some acupoints on the body parts with a special kind of “inner power”.  
> [2] Inner power/force (内功、内力): special strength of kung-fu people. It can be extraordinary attack force and healing power. Kung-fu masters may even apply it to a subject up to several meters away without physical contact. But it is no magic and cannot reach farther.  
> * The commonest translation of Starscream in Mandarin is 红蜘蛛, literally meaning “Red Spider”. That is why he has this nickname in this ‘verse. Star, as STARscream is given a trademark crimson tattoo of  
> [Triones](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dipper), the seven principal stars of the constellation Ursa Major, below his left eye.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for this section: elaborated depiction of slaughter

Starscream’s words cause an uproar around the drill ground. The red killer is arrogant as he is said to be: chained and shackled, he still dares to satirize the Alliance on its recent loss of half of the Senators. Moreover, he addresses the slaughter of multiple Senators as if it was nothing – desperado, for sure.

Another Senator strikes the table in anger. “Scoundrel. Contemptible! Must we waste more time with him? Just return him to the jail.”

Starscream keeps sneering.

“Do those empty chairs also contempt me?”

For a while, no one even try to refute him. The remaining Senators stare at him in abhorrence, and also, somehow in dread.

If it were not for Starscream, those chairs should not have been empty. If they had also been among the Senators hanging out on that day, would they have been able to escape unscathed?

Starscream continues before they can react.

“The fights of us and all in your cells against the Alliance - or the crimes we have committed, as you put them – are brought about by yourself, by your coerce and corruption. What we Decepticons did are only to justify your destruction by giving it a badge.”

“Take him -”

Proteus yells, finally pulling himself together. That being said, Starscream is technically already taken by them, his acupoints blocked, arms chained, and wrists shackled.

But suddenly, the chain on his arms clangs to the ground. He must have been able to unlock the sophisticated shackle on him in one second, or contort his arm muscles and bones to an incredible degree to get rid of the chain, making the chain useless anyway.

In that instant he moves. The blocks on his acupoints, of course, have been either broken through secretly by his inner force, or not fully blocked at all when he was put into the cell, thanks to the peculiar inner power he practices. It does not matter. Moving no longer like a red butterfly, but rather like a shooting meteor, in seconds he has reached the bottom of the platform on the front of the drill ground where the Senators’ seats stand.

“Guards!”

Proteus shouts as he springs to his feet and retreats. The Senators are all proficient in Kung Fu, but now each of them is busy guarding themselves. Only the guards are responsible to protect their superiors at any risk.

As the guards rush to the middle of the platform for Senator’s seats, the masked man in blue on the right also leaps in, his sword unsheathed and stabbing to the crowd on the platform.

Soundwave is really the mole of the Decepticons.

Proteus has no time to rage against this, too busy retreating towards the building around a hundred yards away behind the platform. It does no good to dogfight a killer, but rather he should defense himself. The Decepticons had been frisked thoroughly before they were jailed, unable to keep even a thin-tipped hairpin. Thus, Starscream cannot have weapons at hand and has to snatch one from the crowd on the platform. As he is engaged in doing so, if Proteus himself can get into that building and activate the defensive structures within it, it will be difficult for Starscream to attack further.

A red silhouette flashes upon the platform almost a stoery high. It is Starscream, skimming up from the beneath and sprinting towards Soundwave. The figures of the two coincide for a flash and then separate, with Soundwave’s sword at Starscream’s hand.

Then Starscream leaps straight from the surface, scales a guard’s shoulder and whirs over the crowd in his front. Stepping another’s shoulder as he falls and bouncing up, he passes through the guards by two mere jumps and goes straight to Proteus.

The guards casted darts and sleeve arrows to Starscream, simply in vain for their target moving like a gust of flying smoke.

Proteus has lost most of his early advantage, as Starscream spends much less time than he anticipated for getting a sword and passing through the guards. The red killer has been at a step from him when he is a score of yards away from the building. 

Proteus should have been regret overlooking Starscream’s maneuvers, ignoring that how dreadfully they can be if they are no more butterfly fancy but fully focused on chasing the enemies.

Proteus was once a top-class player of Kung Fu. He still masters it now, but he is getting aged anyway.

He has to draw his sword to fight back. Yet Starscream abruptly glides to his side, their free hands confront each other and collide.

They have exchanged several strikes with their fists and palms when Proteus suddenly feels his inner power suffocates within his chest. His moves slow down, a chilling coldness spreading upwards from his feet.

Null Power, the bizarre inner power practiced by Starscream that can hinder the inner power circulation of his enemies.

In the coldness and stagnation he feels a cool breeze on his larynx.

Then he stops, standing still. He topples down to the ground until Starscream withdraws his sword and retreats several steps aside.

Blood gushes out from the sword cut on his throat in the pulse of his heartbeats, turning deep virid immediately.

Several guards are approaching from the Senators’ platform, intending to help Proteus, yet they now slow down and hesitate, shocked by the scene before them. Looking at them coldly, Starscream raises his sword horizontally in front of his chest and turns the blade to the sunlight. The darkling blue reflection from the blade rips into the eyes of the crowd.

The reflection of deadly venom.

Being sieged and captured into the Alliance was in fact the Decepticons’ bold gambit. Their intended exactly to enter the heartland of the Alliance headquarter and wipe out the remaining Senators.

The sword at Starscream’s hand, handed over by Soundwave, is actually a sword of Starscream himself which he is most accustomed to use. Only the sword was inside the Soundwaves’ swordsheath, with its hilt wrapped by a cloth strip in the same pattern as Soundwave’s sword, to avoid the suspicion of his acquaintances in the Alliance. Like most of the killers’ swords, this sword is thinner and lighter than average, so it can slip easily into Soundwave’s swordsheath.

Starscream seldom envenoms his swords, but this time he needs to kill at one stroke. Besides, he never claims himself as a righteous one.

Spinning his wrist, he points the sword forward and darts back to the battle, together with Soundwave against all from the Alliance on the platform. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning of this chapter: depiction of slaughter

The platform has gone into chaos. Somebodies are fighting back, the others fleeing for their own lives, let alone the panicked delegates from other factions off the platform around the drill ground.

Starscream weaves through the crowd, dodging the guards by feints and evasive steps, his only targets being the Senators. The guards are elites in the Alliance’s security force and proficient in rounding up the intruders using arrows and rope nets. But the platform is a narrow space, and Starscream moves so fast that they cannot predict where he will be in the next flash, making it impossible for them to encircle him at a certain distance and start a siege. Now the large number of them turns out a disadvantage, leaving them being crushed one by one.

\- More than a disadvantage. That the crowd on the platform obstruct the view of each other has become a fatal weakness against the red killer.

Even his eye-catching red garment makes him a good target, Starscream fleets so fast that he is almost flickering hither and thither between the crowd in their eyes. At this second he attacks on one side, and at the next he already passes over two layers of guards, his sword running through a Senator behind them on the other side.

Worse still, his enemies have to watch out the venom on his sword. Just then he showed them the blade envenomed to darkling blue exactly to cause their dread. More timid and hesitated enemies tend to expose the vulnerabilities of their defense.

Crowded as the platform is, he proceeds almost unopposed. Five minutes later there is not a single Senator standing on the platform; the Senators have either dropped to the ground or fled into the building behind. Then the guards also retreat into the building on the command of the fled Senators.

Starscream sneers aloud with his sharp and raucous voice. He flies to the front of the large wooden sign behind the Alliance Leader’s chair - on which writes a slogan “Worship martial arts and carry forward virtues” – and flashes out a dozen of slashes on the board. The slashes make up a wolf-face-like figure spreading half his height.

All factions’ delegates around the drill ground see the figure. The badge to justify the destruction of the Alliance as Starscream put it.

The Decepticon insignia.

Soundwave trots to Starscream’s side, carrying a sword snatched from a guard.

“Continue with the plan, Starscream.” He says in a slightly disapproving tone, apparently to suggest that it is unwise to spend time swaggering before their complete victory.

“Hah.” Answers Starscream as he scabbards his sword back to Soundwave’s sheath and take the sword at the latter’s hand. He skitters out of the drill ground straight towards the Alliance jail.

The next step of the Decepticons’ plan is to let him go back to the jail and free everyone there, not only their comrades. Many of the other prisoners are there because they repelled the Alliances’ high hand or were considered dissidents by the Alliance. Once freed, they will be thankful or even pledge their allegiances to the Con’s faction.

So Starscream will need to cut through and break many rail fences and shackles. It will be awkward to trouble keeping his envenomed sword from touching the prisoners when he does that.

 *** ***

In the small hours of the next day, Megatron sits on the leader’s chair in the Decepticon meeting hall.

No one else is in the hall. The Decepticons won a thorough triumph yesterday; they almost eradicated the Senators, seized plenty of materials and weapons, and incorporated a good number of the Alliance’s ex-prisoners that were willing to join the Decepticons. Only a short while earlier did their men finally settle down for a rest. Shortly afterwards, Sentinel will be sure to counterattack with his inner circle and remaining forces in the Alliance branches. That will be another series of fierce battles.

Steppes approach in the outside corridor. Megatron looks up and sees the young man in red enter the hall.

“Come here.”

Starscream follows his leader’s order and walks up to him. In the light of the oil lamp on the desk, he postures as smooth as waterflow, the skin around the ends of his eyes and eyebrows tinted rosy as if he put up a stage makeup. Surely impossible did he use any cosmetics just now; he did not even take off his blood-spattered clothes or cleaned his face until a quarter of an hour before. It is his own face that is almost always tinted and sends forth a nature allure.

“Sit.”

Orders Megatron again as he grabs Starscream’s wrist with his thick and coarse hand. The young man will not be able to step back or take a seat on the nearest chair a yard away without shaking off his leader’s hand.

Starscream understands what his leader means. He follows the pull around his wrist to sit on Megatron’s thigh and lets his leader wrap an arm around his waist. It’s just how their private relationship is.

“You are shivering.” Megatron says, able to feel the slightest tensing and trembles on the man clinging to him.

“I have fought for too long and did all post-battle work without a moment’s rest. My limited strength is running out.” Answers Starscream.

Megatron shakes his head, not accepting that Starscream is shivering due to exhaustion.

“How many have you killed today?” He asks.

“Eight, or more… six Senators. The guards were not our targets, I fatally wounded two of them, yet more may have died if they have not been detoxified in time.”

Megatron takes the young man’s jaw with his free hand, making him look at himself.

“The Senators are all perpetrators owing multiple lives of others. No need to feel pity about them.”

He knows exactly why Starscream is shivering. Starscream, only nineteen years old, is a killer, but still he has never killed so many within such a short while, except for days before when he also slaughtered nearly a half of the Senators.

He can be as cold as a sword when killing, but that does not mean he feels nothing as he thinks of himself almost massacring the entire Senate.

“I feel no pity for them.” Starscream denies at once, his tone somehow anxious, seemingly to worry that his leader would blame him for being unnecessarily tenderhearted and insufficiently efficient.

“You’ll get used to it.” Megatron lets go his jaw. Starscream joined the Decepticons only one year ago and have never been a gladiator in the Forge like his leader. Nor he has learnt about how the kills are in the Forge.

In his early years, Megatron raid to pull down a branch of the Alliance when he could no longer stand the oppression of the Alliance. Then he was on the top of the Alliance’s wanted list. Having no elsewhere to refuge, he sought his fortune in the Forge. The rule in the Forge was that lost gladiators must be killed or badly disabled and deprived the ability to practice Kung Fu again. It is impossible to get a place in the Forge without following its rule. For those disabled losers, pretty many of them would soon revenged to death by their foes.

And Megatron has a win streak of over one hundred games.

Starscream changes the subject. “The day before yesterday, when I pretended to defect and tell the Alliance the secrets of our faction…” 

“Huh?”

“You said you would dismember me. It was untrue but you, my lord, glared me as if you had dismembered me already.” Starscream moves a little in his leader’s arm, uneasily.

“Feeling aggrieved?”

“I dare not.”

“A realistic performance is necessary for fooling even the idiots in the Alliance.” Megatron chuckles. His hand over Starscream's waist caresses upwards along the red killer’s lean back and finally stick into his backhair, staying in his back head.

With Megatron’s inner power strength, now he can crush Starscream’s brains out by releasing his charged inner force without a single move of his hand.

Starscreams cannot help himself tensing and holding his breath, but only for a breath’s duration. Then he relaxes and breathes like normal.

He is forcing himself to relax, to represent his loyalty to his lord and that he is not fear putting his own life under his leader’s hand.

Surely Megatron sees it.

He does not suspect Starscream for the time being, though. During the mere year since Starscream joint the Decepticon, Megatron has seen through the killer’s character and understood that he’s not one willing to rank below any others. He is now subservient due to Megatron’s capability and courage, but after he gets more fledged later…

Megatron believes that he cannot wrong Starscream. He and Starscream are the same kind in terms of that they are born to rebel. How can he misperceive himself?

But that will be something long after. Now, even Starscream himself may not realize his own rebellious nature, nor that such nature will lead him to his destiny.

The Decepticon leader retreats his hand from Starscream’s back head, take his jaw again and press his lips over Starscream’s.

With their fortune changing rapidly in the teeth of the storm sweeping the martial arts world, he feels no need to bother something that will happen far in the future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this work is a Kung Fu Fiction cover version of episodes in IDW Megatron Origin comics. 
> 
> Later stories of this series will be of original plots and no longer cover long episodes in official works.


End file.
